“University Journals: Problems and Solutions Workshop” Held at CoHE
Problems and solutions related to university journals were discussed.
CoHE President Özvar: “As the President of the Council of Higher
Education, I expect from university journals to exhibit exemplary
behavior in academic publication processes.”
December 12, 2022 / Ankara
CoHE President Erol Özvar chaired the “University Journals: Problems and
Solutions Workshop” held at CoHE. The current status of university journals
was discussed at the meeting.
In addition to the representatives from universities and related
institutions, faculty members and administrators, who are working as
editors and have a good command of the process, also participated in the
workshop organized by the Council of Higher Education.
In his opening speech, CoHE President Erol Özvar noted that they had been
holding various meetings and workshops on the issues in the higher
education system and sought the opinions of experts in their fields and
said, “As in all the decisions we have taken so far, we have consulted with
experts on the improvement of university journals. I think that we should
develop new policies. In this context, I sincerely believe that the
solutions and steps to be taken to improve the quality of our university
journals will contribute not only to our universities but also to the
entire scientific world.”
He said that universities had three basic duties as stated in the Higher
Education Law No. 2547, which were high-level education, scientific
research and publication, and consultancy. Özvar underlined that the
editing and refereeing of scientific journals was a difficult task that
required great devotion.
He noted that academic publishing was a major area of commercial activity
in the world, adding that there was an annual turnover of more than 20
billion dollars and said, “Although it seems difficult for our university
journals to compete with the journals belonging to global-scale publishing
houses, our university journals have many advantages. The fact that almost
all university journals are open access thanks to TÜBİTAK's pioneering and
facilitating projects such as Dergipark, do not seek commercial profit, and
have the potential to operate a more dynamic article processing process
with young Turkish academics could be counted among these advantages. It is
important that most of the university journals have already switched to
electronic publishing, while print publishing is increasingly being
replaced by digital publishing due to the issues of archiving,
preservation, information access and costs.”
- “Scientists must behave in a way that preserves the dignity of
science”
Özvar stated that one of the issues that journals should pay the most
attention to was plagiarism and emphasized that every scientist should
behave in a way that preserved the dignity of science. He noted that they
came across plagiarism such as the plagiarizing of an entire scientific
work, display of some parts of a scientific work as an original work, or
use of some pictures and graphics without citation and said, “Apart from
plagiarism, other scientific unethical behaviors are forgery (faking),
distortion, duplication, slicing and unfair authorship. It is our priority
that the measures we take and the solutions we produce to prevent such
situations are effective and sustainable.”
- “The indexing of Turkish journals in international indexes is not at
the desired level”
Özvar stated that he expected from university journals to exhibit exemplary
behaviors in academic publication processes and emphasized that there would
be sanctions in case university journals that behaved inconsistently with
academic processes were detected.
Özvar shared with the participants that the indexing of Turkish journals in
international indexes was not at the desired level. He stated that they
expected university journals to be more visible in international media, and
that it was quite important for university journals to take the places they
deserved and to be included in international indexes.
- “Our priority is to raise our university journals to the class of
qualified journals”
He said that their priority was to increase the quality of journals
according to their plans for the future, to ensure that they were indexed
in international indexes, and to raise university journals to the class of
qualified journals. Özvar emphasized that public responsibility and
scientific ethical values should not be ignored while increasing the
international visibility of university journals.
He stated that the need for academic journal publishing had increased in
parallel with the expansion of the field of higher education in Türkiye and
the increase in scientific production and said, “National and international
private publishing houses continue to publish their works with the support
of authors and/or universities. Similarly, high subscription fees are paid
to databases for accessing articles. In the meantime, Dergipark, YÖK
Academic search engines and the websites of universities have become more
important in terms of accessing open sources.”
- “Türkiye is one of the countries that increased the number of
documents the most”
Özvar stated that it was useful to make a comparison between academic
publications and journals in Türkiye to understand the current situation of
university journals and continued his speech as follows:
“While the total number of documents in the world in 2021 was 4 million 960
thousand 674 according to Scopus data, the number of documents belonging to
researchers from Türkiye was 67 thousand 150. While Türkiye became one of
the countries that increased the number of documents the most in 2021
compared to the previous year, it ranked 17th in the world ranking. On the
other hand, there are 232 Turkish journals indexed in Scopus. In terms of
the number of journals, Türkiye ranked 18th among countries in the world.
14,433 scientific documents were published in these journals indexed in
Scopus. When we look at the rankings of the journals, only one university
journal is in the top 5,000 (ranking 4,406). Moreover, the “h” indices for
these 232 journals vary considerably, ranging from 1 to 72.
According to Scopus data, 14 out of 1,000 scientific documents around the
world in 2021 belonged to the researchers in Türkiye, while only three of
them were published in Turkish journals. National-based journals include
much less international scientific documents than the number of
international scientific documents produced by the researchers in our
country. When we look at it from this perspective, we see once again how
important the discussions to improve the current situation of our
university journals have become.
I would also like to say that there are 1,386 university journals
registered in the Dergipark system. While 502 of them are scanned in
TR-Dizin, eight of them are within the scope of SCI and one of them is in
the SSCI databases. Scopus has 36 university journals. There are 72
university journals in ESCI. From this point of view, there is a need to
discuss what can be done so that the journals in Dergipark are included in
more indexes.”
CoHE President Özvar stated that he believed the suggestions and results
coming from the workshop would guide the decisions to be taken on these
issues, adding that he attached importance to Türkiye's contribution to the
academic knowledge in the world.
- Workshop Sessions -
The workshop was organized in three sessions. Access to national and
international indexes, ethical principles and publication policies, open
access, printed and electronic publications, editorial processes,
alternative publication processes and formats, accessibility and
reproducibility of data sets, academic publication styles, guidelines for
authors, sharing of bibliometric data, data base subscriptions, faculty and
institute journals were discussed.
A wide range of topics related to university journals, especially the
current status of university journals, their publication quality, their
indexing in national and international indexes, their compliance with
publication ethics, editorial issues, and current problems and solutions
were discussed in the workshop.